Octopus Garden Prepares for Feast of Seven Fishes

Most times of the year, no one can be seen in Octopus Garden save the workers in the back trimming squid beaks or keeping an eye on the octopus-washing machines. Vincent Cutrone, the owner of the store (hidden off Avenue U in Gravesend, Brooklyn, and marked with a sign made of stick-on letters from the hardware store), often is not at the counter. When the rare walk-in customer appears, his staff just hollers to him in the office.

All that changes in the days before Christmas Eve, when Italian-Americans who typically celebrate with a Feast of Seven Fishes arrive en masse for supplies. This is the place you go for your octopus, cuttlefish and calamari.

“It’s an absolute spectacle,” said Salvatore Rizzo, a Bensonhurst native who runs the De Gustibus Cooking School at Macy’s Herald Square. Customers, he said, tend to shout over one another, often in Italian, in pursuit of the most tender octopus and the freshest fish.

“Don’t even try to go there near Christmas Eve,” Mr. Rizzo warned. “There’s a line out the door from 6:30 in the morning.”

Rino Pietanza, 32, grew up going to the store with his grandfather. He planned ahead, stopping by from Park Slope on a Saturday in early December to fill up a box with cephalopods, which is what scientists call tentacled mollusks like octopus.

“Vinnie’s is the best,” Mr. Pietanza said. “When you go to a restaurant, you can tell if it’s from here.”

On his visit, traffic was still slow enough that Mr. Cutrone, 55, had a chance to cook, offering customers a cherry-tomato-dressed tentacle from a paper plate. Octopus is often microwaved in the office kitchen in between packing the wholesale orders for restaurants like Le Bernardin.

Those orders, Mr. Cutrone said, make up 95 percent of his business.

But from now until Christmas, it’s all about the remaining 5 percent. By the peak crush midmorning on Dec. 23, their sleepy shop will be transformed into what Mr. Cutrone’s wife calls “the pit.”

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This year, he is contemplating a doorman to keep things orderly. “I wake up at 4 a.m.,” he said, shaking his head. “I feel like that guy that makes the doughnuts.”

He also bulks up his inventory, laying out conch, langoustines, head-on shrimp, eels, salt cod, live clams, mussels, oysters and a school of silvery sardines on ice.

Mr. Cutrone’s not-so-secret weapons are his “tenderizers,” three giant metal tanks that function like industrial-size octopus-washing machines. Eaten straight from the sea, octopus is tough. But after a 30-minute tumble, said Mr. Cutrone, the texture softens from shoe leather to succulence. You can tell they’re ready when the tentacles begin to curl, he said, a state known in Italian as polpo arricciato.

He inherited his first two small machines from the first owners of Octopus Garden, who opened the original on Stillwell Avenue about 30 years ago. Those now tenderize cuttlefish and the occasional batch of squid tentacles.

Like Mr. Cutrone, the first owners immigrated from the Italian province of Bari near the Adriatic Sea, where fishermen beat octopus on the rocks to tenderize them. The machines are the modern, if less picturesque, equivalent.

When Mr. Cutrone bought the business, it was almost entirely retail. Today it is chefs who seek out his product. Mr. Cutrone also noted that there are fewer Italians in the neighborhood, and a younger generation that prefers dining out.